Abaya Beware

It may well have been the most surreal press conference in recent sporting history. With a thousand cameras trained in his direction, one of the world of football’s biggest names flashed his trademark grin under those trademark spectacles, and proceeded to throw out trademark platitudes about the hard work ahead. Sven Goran Eriksson was back. Only it wasn’t exactly the big time. He wasn’t being unveiled at a major European football club, nor even a freshly-promoted team in England’s ever-lucrative Premiership. No, Eriksson, the former manager of England, had just been announced as the director of football at Notts County, a club who can’t even claim to be the biggest club in Nottingham – a city whose footballing legacy comes almost exclusively from neighbours Forest, and which hasn’t seen top-flight football for nine years.

In fact, Notts County have remained in the bottom league of English football for most of this decade. Last season, they narrowly avoided dropping out of the Football League altogether, finishing 77 league places behind Manchester
City, the scene of Eriksson’s last foray into English football.

In a normal world, the former England manager, who guided the national side to two World Cup quarter-finals and who has won league titles in Sweden and Italy, wouldn’t have even opened an envelope bearing the Magpies’ logo. But this is a normal world no longer. The attraction wasn’t in joining the oldest professional football club still in existence, but more in the package put together by a consortium based in Qatar – representing the latest Middle Eastern assault on English football. Where Russian oligarchs and US bean counters once ruled the roost, the monetary power has made a sharp shift towards the Gulf.

Since Dubai’s Al Maktoum family tried to buy Liverpool in 2007, and Kuwait’s al-Kharafi family made similar bids for the club earlier this year, Manchester City has famously been transformed into the richest club in the world thanks to its acquisition by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s royal family. Last month, a certain Dr Sulaiman al-Fahim – the flamboyant Donald Trump-style Emirati who fronted the Man City deal – got his hands on Portsmouth. Other Premiership clubs are sure to follow. But Notts County?

Given that he had been duped by the British News of the World’s “Fake Sheikh” – when a journalist masquerading as Emirati royalty almost convinced him to leave his then England job for a role with Aston Villa – Eriksson must have worn a wry smile when an offer, this time a very real one, from the Middle East to manage a team in England’s fourth tier landed on his mat. Still, newly lightened of his duties as coach of Mexico, he allowed Munto Finance, County’s new owners, to persuade him of their noble intent. The group, believed to be backed by money from private Qatari businessmen as well as the country’s royal family, were eager to quickly put Notts County’s name on the map.

They’ve certainly achieved that. But the move wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for last year’s “Abramovich moment”, when Manchester City fell into the hands of the Al Nahyan family. Since then, Manchester City’s spending in this transfer window, on the likes of Gareth Barry, Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor, has blown through the $100 million mark, and their attempt at smashing the world transfer record in January by making an audacious $100 million bid for AC Milan schemer Kaka is ample evidence that the bleak global economic outlook hasn’t hit at least one part of the world.

The big question is why has the Middle East, and in particular the Gulf, become so interested in some of the world’s most popular football clubs? Economics have little to do with it. It doesn’t even have much to do with football. Rather, it’s about prestige and marketing. And in regards to the Manchester City deal, a game of one-upmanship with Abu Dhabi’s great rivals, Dubai. Dubai has been, without question, years ahead of its regional rivals in terms of using big, high profile sporting events to promote itself. Deals like the one that saw Tiger Woods agree to build his first golf course in the emirate or events like the world’s richest horse race, the Dubai World Cup, have thrust Dubai into the global spotlight. In fact, Dubai had gotten so good at marketing that even well respected news organs in the West continuously refer to Dubai as a country in itself. In terms of exposure, though, there is simply no better way of getting your message out there than by jumping on the back of the Premiership, which boasts 160 million viewers every weekend in over 200 countries.

The capture of Manchester City was a huge coup for Abu Dhabi and one that helped to put Dubai’s current economic problems in sharp relief. With few natural resources, huge levels of debt and falling real estate and tourist numbers, Dubai has struggled to re-enter the game. Yet there are still plenty of candidates out there looking to buy, meaning that the Abu Dhabi United Group and Munto Finance will certainly not be the last regional group to snatch one of football’s grande dames. A host of clubs, including Newcastle United and Charlton Athletic, have sent representatives to the region to discuss takeovers. In Qatar, another resource-rich Gulf state, the Q League still sees huge sums pumped into it to attract foreign players, many of whom have been naturalised to play for the Qatari team. Their resources are such that the country has also made an official bid to host the World Cup, not to mention the current link to the group financing Notts County.

What can come of this new era of Monopoly football? Michel Platini, the head of UEFA, has been scathing about the effects that foreign Middle Eastern ownership is having on European leagues, whilst Sepp Blatter has raised concerns about how domestic leagues have been left to fall into disrepute. Both have raised question about the English Premiership being run by owners from far away lands. But they both fail to appreciate the strength of the English game abroad. The Premiership is no longer a domestic concern. It’s a worldwide phenomenon with a worldwide audience. Everywhere in the Middle East I have been told by fans from Sana’a to Tehran that they support Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea with every bit the passion of those born near their clubs. Hence why the Premiership believed it could try out the controversial “39th game” proposal, where one round of games would take place in a foreign city, with Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all expressing an interest in hosting one of them. It failed, but we will hear of it again. 

They are on safer ground when they talk about the gargantuan sums of cash now involved in the game thanks to wage inflation. Khaldoon al-Mubarek, Manchester City’s chairman, complained recently that a player had a “transfer price” and a “Manchester City price”. The same kind of inflation occurred when Roman Abramovich started his Chelsea revolution. It is the price of success and, as this year’s transfer window splurges by Real Madrid and Manchester City have proved, they are only getting bigger. Now the game is seeing multiple owners with pockets even deeper than your average Russian oligarch. Wages may have gone up but so has the price of buying and running a Premiership club. Where as once being a billionaire was enough, now only a trillionaire will do.
Yet for all the hand wringing and paranoia exhibited by the likes of Blatter and Platini, the money still keeps coming. The economic boom times may be a distant memory, but it looks like the Middle East’s moneymen, and maybe even Sven Goran Eriksson, are here to stay. 

What Abu Dhabi has spent so far on Man City
Robinho
$53.3m
Craig Bellamy
$16.4m
Carlos Tevez
$41m
Roque Santa Cruz
$29.5
Emmanuel Adebayor
$40m
Kolo Toure
$24.6m
Total: $211 million

A full version of this article appears in NOX36